Jack stopped and grabbed Veilleur's arm.
"Wait a sec. Wait a sec. What do you know about rakoshi? And how do you know?"
"I'm sensitive to certain things. I sensed their arrival. But I was more acutely aware of the necklaces worn by Kusum Bahkti and his sister."
Jack felt slightly numb. The only other people who knew about the rakoshi and the necklaces were the two most important people in his world—Gia and Vicky—plus two others: Abe and…
"Did Kolabati send you?"
"No. I wish I knew where she was. We may have need of her before long, but we have other concerns right now."
" 'We'?"
"Yes. We."
Jack stared at Veilleur. "You're him, aren't you. You're the one Herta told me about. You're Glae—"
The old man raised a hand. "I am Veilleur—Glenn Veilleur. That is the only name I answer to now. It is best it remains that way lest the other name is overheard."
"Gotcha," Jack said, though he didn't.
So this was Glaeken, the Ally's point man on Earth—or former point man, rather. Jack had thought he'd be more impressive—taller, younger.
"We must speak of other things, Jack. Many things."
There was an understatement. But where?
Of course.
"You like beer?"
"An interesting turn of phrase," Veilleur said, pointing.
Jack glanced up at Julio's FREE BEER TOMORROW… sign over the bar. It had hung there so long, Jack no longer noticed it.
"Yeah. Gets him in trouble sometimes with people who don't get it."
They were each halfway through their first brew—a Yuengling lager for Jack, a Murphy's Stout for Veilleur. In the light now Jack could see that Veilleur's eyes were a bright, sparkling blue—almost as striking as Gia's—in odd contrast to his craggy olive skin. He watched him pour more of the dark brown liquid into his glass and hold it up for inspection.
"All these years and I still don't understand why the bubbles sink instead of rise."
Jack knew the answer—someone had explained the simple physics of the phenomenon to him once—but he didn't want to get into it now. No sidebars, no amusing anecdotes. Time to get to the point.
Julio's was relatively quiet tonight, leaving Jack and the old guy with the rear section pretty much to themselves. An arrangement Jack preferred on most occasions, but especially tonight.
Probably best to conduct discussions about the end of the world—or at least the end of life as anyone knew it—without an audience.
He glanced around the bar with its regulars and its drop-ins, drinking, talking, laughing, posing, making moves, all blissfully unaware of the endless war raging around them.
Jack envied them, wishing he could return to the days, a little over a year ago, when he had shared their ignorance, when he thought he was captain of his life, navigator of his destiny.
No longer. No more coincidences, he'd been told. Instead of steering his own course, he was being pushed this way and that to serve the purposes of two vast, unimaginable, unknowable cosmic… what? Forces? Entities? Beings? If they had names, no one knew them. Nothing so simple as Good and Evil. More like neutral and inimical. Forces that humans in the know had dubbed the Ally and the Otherness—although Jack's dealings with the Ally had caused him only pain and loss. He'd learned he could trust it as an Ally only so far as his purposes were in tune with its agenda. If their purposes diverged, he'd be dropped like last week's Village Voice, or crushed like a fly against a cosmic windshield.
The man on the far side of the table had answers Jack desperately needed.
"So you're the one I'm supposed to replace."
Veilleur shrugged. "Should the need arise, someone is going to replace me. You aren't the only candidate."
"I'm not?" Dare he hope? "Could've fooled me."
"You are a prime candidate—perhaps the prime candidate—but there are backups out there."
"Swell. I sound like a replacement part."
"In a very real sense you are. Don't think of yourself as anything more than a tool. You're not. But you became a tool that stood out among the other tools when you caused the death of the Twins."
Jack closed his eyes, remembering the gaping hole in the Earth that had swallowed a house and a pair of very strange men.
"I was only defending myself. It was them or me. I even tried to save them at the end."
"But you were the proximate cause, and that shifted the mantle of heir apparent to you."
"But I don't want it."
"No sane man would. But only a certain type of man qualifies. He must have a sense of duty and honor and—"
Jack snorted. "Considering my lifestyle, I think I'd have a permanent spot on the bottom of the list."
"You may be what your society considers a career criminal, someone it would lock away if it knew you existed, but I gather you must be someone who does not easily turn his back on problems, and who finishes what he starts."
"What do you mean, 'must be'?"
Veilleur shrugged again. "Though I don't know you all that well, those are the qualities the Ally requires, so I must assume you possess them."
Yeah, well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Navel gazing wasn't his thing. And even if it were, who had time?
Jack leaned forward. "What's it like being the Ally's point man? Does it change you?"
"You mean physically? Of course you're changed, but you feel the same as you ever did. The only difference is you stop aging. If you get sick, you beat the infection quicker than anyone else; if wounded, you heal faster."
"Immortal." The word tasted bitter.
Veilleur nodded. "So to speak. But not indestructible. You can die, but it takes a lot to kill you. An awful lot. But it's the living on and on that changes you. Watching your loved ones age and die while you stay fit, young, and vital." Flashes of infinite hurt danced in his eyes. "Friends, lovers, children, family after family dying while you live on. Watching their wonder turn to hurt as you stay young while they grow old, stay well as they sicken; the hurt turning to anger as you refuse to grow old with them; and sometimes the anger turns to hate as they come to view your agelessness as betrayal."
He sighed and sipped his Murphy's in silence while Jack put himself in those immortal shoes… watching Gia age while he didn't… watching Vicky grow until she was physically his contemporary while her mother moved on through middle age and beyond… burying Gia… burying Vicky…